Zibaldone 8

Buildings begin to meet the sky in varied ways. As I was walking down Brookline Avenue the other day I noticed a multi-purpose development still in construction. On the roof I noticed a canopy that seemed to dematerialize giving a gradual transition between the brick façade and the sky. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see from the distance but the columns looked to be brick with a glass roof resting on top. What lacked however was that the canopy only exists on the front façade. There does not seem to be any conversation between the front and the perpendicular façade. What is expressed is the same language of the material. The aluminum finish performs in a way that reads lighter allowing a smoother transition to the sky.  Each "level" from the ground floor up reads from heavy to light thus involving the entire building to meet the sky, not just the top.

 

Corey Gibbons - Zibaldone 8

Inevitably, a building must meet the sky one way or another.  As a result, there are a variety of ways that this interaction can happen.  While some buildings choose to acknowledge their relationship with the sky, others do not seem to put in the effort and seem to simply stop at a given height.  The residential building on WIT’s campus designed by Perkins+Will, known as Triple 5, is a building that acknowledges its meeting with the sky.  It marks its inevitable vertical limit with a horizontal plane that cantilevers out over the sidewalk below and wraps around the perimeter of the exterior walls.  It provides a visual indication that it cannot continue to grow any taller.  Although it is a simple gesture, without this horizontal plane, the building would appear to merely be a vertical extrusion that is amputated at its maximum height limit.

Zibaldone 8

How does a building meet the sky? 150 words...be specific...image made not taken...due monday...

Peter Cataldo - Zibaldone 7

Due to the laws of physics, without the ground, buildings would not have anything to hold them up. The relationship between a building and the ground is crucial to a building’s structural performance. If the foundation is compromised the building will have very little chance of prolonged survival.

            However, not all buildings have to have a perpendicular, rectangular meeting with the ground. They can meet the ground in various ways, seemingly unstable, without corrupting the structure. The way in which a building meets the ground can comment on how physics works on buildings, for example, or it can show openings into the building, or reflect on other ideas presented throughout the building.

            The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada has a part of its building that looks as if it is rectilinear volume being pushed down by gravity creating “breaks” in the façade.

Zibaldone 7

All buildings meet the ground, but how buildings make that transition say a lot about the building. Using Wentworth Hall as an example, like many buildings it get wider towards the bottom. This shows thickness and a truth to the material and nature. The building also has a large stair in front leading to the entrance which is pulled a good distance off the building. This is not only for thickness but also to highlight where the floors are and how the lowest windows you see are path of the basement floor. This help prioritize the entrance and the first floor holding it higher than the ground plane suggesting a type of hierarchy not seen in many new buildings.

Zibaldone 7

How does a building meet the ground?  Or maybe the building seems like it never meets the ground.  Buildings are constructed in various ways to show how the building meets the ground or not.  Our class discussion at Harvard touched on how H.H. Richardson constructed his buildings to meet the ground.  The stone or brick would extend from the building to create the sense that it was holding the building up.  At the MIT Chapel not to far from Harvard the building seems to not meet the ground.  There is a canal around the building, and then the building sits on small structural bricks.  This makes the building almost seem like it is floating above the water.  From the inside you can look out, but only down into the water, which reflects the light inside.  Buildings can also dig into the ground to meet the ground in a different way, like Larsen Hall at Harvard.  Buildings meet the ground in the way that the architect wants them to and designs for. 

Zibaldone 7

    In this example of how a building meets the ground you will find that it can meet in a multitude of ways within a single building. The DuPont Environmental Education Center (DEEC) separates its program through different volumes. Each volume then meets the ground differently. The tan volume that serves the offices of the buildings meets the ground through support of the volume below and the large columns. The space below the offices acts as storage and maintenance. It is lifted off the ground to create a base for the building as the topography below isn't flat. The large red structure on the right side of the building is used for movement between the floors. It sits on an exposed foundation to show its mass and rigidity.

Zimbaldone Sette

How a building meets the ground can reveal a great deal about the intentions of the architect. For example, Boston City Hall, a building made nearly entirely out of concrete surrounded by a brick plaza. How the City Hall meets the ground reveals what Kallmann McKinnel and Knowles were intending. There are two obvious major details that they use to interact with the ground. There is the first condition, where the vertical brick, which isn’t structural, simply wraps the corner and seamlessly joins the brick plaza. The second detail is where the concrete meets the brick plaza. As we can see from the image, there is only a simple waterproofing joint and the end of the brick. This condition shows that Kallman McKinneland Knowles saw the concrete as being the more important material by allowing that face to read as one continuing face, and the brick just stopping for it.

Zibaldone 7

The way a building meets the ground is one of the important aspects of architecture.  The way the building meets the ground can tell us a lot about the building we are looking at.  For instance in a lot of H.H. Richardson’s work, the lower part of the building bulges out and sits firmly on the ground.  This helps to emphasize the massiveness, and the size and weight of the building.  When you look at one of his buildings, as you see the bottom part of the building bulging out at the thicker bottom, you get a real good sense of the massiveness and weight of the building.  If for instance, the building was situated within the landscape, you would maybe read this differently.  This is so because you are not seeing how firmly it stands on the ground and you don’t get a sense of its thickness either.

Zibaldone 7

There are a number of factors that come in to play when describing or explaining how a building meets the ground. It can depend on such things like where the site is located and what the intentions are for the finished building. On our walk through and around Harvard this past week, we came across a number of structures that met the ground differently. Larsen Hall was intended to house more program than the site would have allowed so the designers were forced to sink the structure below ground level as to not create a towering building in the residential area. Using the dropped site to their advantage, the building was set back from the street to create an accessible outdoor space, accentuating the dropped structure.

            Similar to Larsen Hall, Hauser Hall also faced some issues with the overall footprint of the design. Hauser Hall is another example of the surroundings of a site that defines how a building meets the ground. In relation to the existing structures done by H.H. Richardson, the building seems to “fan out” at the base giving the feeling that its heavy. What intrigued me though, was how the original plan had to be modified in order to prevent the building from obstructing an important view. This drastically changes how the building meets the ground because now its footprint forces a perspective or defines a certain view.